Lars van Doorn shortlisted for Daniël Heinsius Prize for the best master thesis
Lars van Doorn, research staff member at the Department of Economics at Leiden University, is shortlisted for the Daniël Heinsius Prize for the best master thesis of the Netherlands and Flanders.
This prize is jointly awarded by the Dutch Political Science Association (NKWP) and the Flemish Political Science Association (VPW). A jury of Dutch and Flemish scholars has nominated the best four master theses.
Winners and losers of globalisation
Lars van Doorn’s thesis, written for the master Economics and Governance, contributes to an important debate in the political economy literature on welfare state reform: the association between globalisation and welfare state spending. There has been a long-lasting debate in the literature regarding the effect of globalisation on welfare state spending. Whereas some argue that globalisation and welfare state spending are in tension, others emphasize the positive relation between globalisation and welfare state spending. However, both arguments neglect the political conflict that underlies the relationship between globalisation and welfare state spending. Consequently, they overlook the diverging impact of globalisation across individual welfare programmes. Lars van Doorn, supervised by Olaf van Vliet and Koen Caminada, fills this gap in the literature by analysing the effect of globalisation on eight individual welfare programmes in fourteen OECD countries. This study’s main theoretical contribution is the argument that the institutional structure of welfare programmes that are associated with both firm demands from the (potential) losers of globalisation and strong opposition from capital owners, mediates the relationship between globalisation and expenditure levels. Moreover, Lars van Doorn has constructed new variables based on large micro data sets from the Luxembourgh Income Studies. In this way, he is able to test his theoretical idea empirically. This is an excellent idea that could be published in a serious international academic journal.
Background Lars van Doorn
Lars van Doorn completed the master Economics and Governance cum laude at Leiden University. Prior to this programme, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science from Leiden University and a master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Amsterdam. Currently, Lars van Doorn works as a research staff member at the Department of Economics at Leiden University.